Page 17 of Roark
Two hours later, the nurse returned and announced that Tamika could see her mother. “Five minutes,” she instructed. “And the doctor will be waiting to talk to you when you come out.”
Tamika stood still for a few seconds until Roark touched her arm lightly. She jolted at the touch and stared down at his hand.
“I can walk you to the door if it’ll help.”
This was the first time they’d spoken in the last two hours. It had seemed oddly comforting that they’d sat in silence for so long. She hadn’t once felt the urgency to pace. “No. I’ll be fine,” she lied.
His arm fell to his side, and he took a step back. She was about to walk away when she remembered she’d taken her shoes off earlier. Finding them under another chair, she pushed her now-swollen feet back into the pumps and left the waiting room.
Minutes later, she was at her mother’s bedside, staring down at a body that looked even more frail than it had when she’d left the cottage this morning.
There was a bandage going all the way up Sandra’s right arm and one on her neck. An IV line was on the back of her left hand, a nasal tube in her nose giving oxygen, and stark-white sheets were pulled up to her chest. Other wires trailed down to hide beneath her hospital gown and were connected to the many machines that beeped and buzzed throughout the room. Shades were pulled down at the two windows on the wall farthest from the bed, and there was a chair a few feet behind her, which Tamika ignored.
Instead she stood directly beside the bed, her fingers lightly touching her mother’s. “I’m gonna find out who did this,” she whispered. “If it takes everything I have, I swear to you I’ll find out why.”
Her mother couldn’t hear the words and neither could her father, but the part of Tamika that loved her parents above all else in this world felt content in knowing the declaration had been made.
Roark had made the decision to help her long before she’d left the waiting room. He’d spent the silent time they’d waited together running it over and over in his mind, trying to make some sense of it, but that was pointless. It didn’t make sense.
He’d never met Tamika Rayder before today and had never heard of her parents before then. He had no idea how his mother had known this woman’s father, or how any of this connected to his mother’s death, but the two events were somehow intertwined. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind that everything that had happened today was connected to what had happened to his mother a couple of weeks ago, and to Lemuel Rayder a year ago.
He could see her speaking to the doctor and knew he only had a few minutes before she’d be back in the waiting room. With his phone still in hand from the call he’d made moments after she’d left the room, he hurried to make a second call. “I’m going to forward an email with a letter attached to you. I need you to tear it apart, find out any and everything you can about everyone mentioned.”
“What’s going on?” Cade asked.
“I don’t know,” Roark replied. “I really don’t know. But it’s something we need to figure out.”
“Where are you? At the manor? Do you need Linc or Ridge to come out there with you?”
“No!” The answer was too vehement and probably too loud. Roark walked to the other end of the waiting room, boxing himself into a corner and turning his back to the entryway as he began to talk again. “For right now, just look into the email. Follow it wherever it takes you. I’ll call you in the morning.”
“Hey, man, you’re scaring me. You okay? I can call somebody and have them there with you within the hour.” And he could. Cade had more connections than anyone Roark knew. If Cade made a call to their other cousin Trent Donovan and his ex-mercenary friend Devlin Bonner, those connections would be tripled.
But Roark wasn’t ready to wake those sleeping beasts. No, he’d prefer to keep this as lowkey as possible until they knew exactly what they were dealing with. “I’m fine. Just got an unexpected lead. One I don’t think we should let the police know about just yet.” Roark had no idea why he’d said that. He wasn’t some type of private investigator. He was a businessman, but he was smart and he knew how to work a plan.
That was what he did for a living. He ran a company based on investigating and planning where to drill for oil next, and when they found the oil they were looking for, he developed a strategy for how to best market that commodity and negotiate deals with the highest bidders. Investigating and organizing were his thing, and he was convinced that whatever was going on here was part of someone else’s plan.
“Roark.”
He turned when he heard his name and stared at the woman who just might be a very integral part of that plan. “I’ll check in with you tomorrow,” he said to Cade and disconnected the call. “How’s your mum?” Walking toward her seemed natural. He never questioned the need to be close to her.
Her eyes looked blurry, not like she’d been crying, but like she’d been trying her best not to. Roark knew that look well. “She’s stable. Not awake. They said I should come back tomorrow.”
“Is she going to be alright?”
“The burns can be treated. There were no internal injuries. Tuppence probably saved her life.”
“Tuppence?”
“She’s the caretaker at the cottage. She was there with my mother. The doctor’s operated on her and she’s critical right now, but they’re optimistic she’ll make a full recovery.”
“Those sound like very good reports.”
She nodded, but he couldn’t tell if she agreed with what he’d said, or if she was just acknowledging that he’d spoken.
“Do you need to call anyone? Family?”
“My mother is my family,” she said in a voice that sounded isolated and bereft. “Her and Tuppence. They’re all I have.” She’d been looking at something over his shoulder as she spoke, but then she shook her head as if bringing herself back to reality. “Ah, I need to find a hotel and then figure out if I can get into the cottage tomorrow. I’ll have to see what can be salvaged and how bad the damage is. My mother owns the place and I’m sure there’s insurance, so I need to find that paperwork and give the insurance company a call.”
